The wrong key

It has been a long time since I have had the misfortune of reading a piece of Orientalist tripe as bad as Ian Jack’s introductory essay to Granta’s second collection dedicated to India, and subtitled, ‘Another Way of Seeing’. Jack spends the length of the essay discussing how India has changed from the time he first came here in 1976 to now, marvelling at the progress made in the country, and even more at the progress made in writing in English, going so far as to say, “well into the second half of the last century India remained largely content to see itself as others saw it.” This is true only, and only if, you believe that the only writing that matters on India is writing in English. It means you must ignore Mahasweta Devi, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Sri Lal Sukla and the dozens of authors and poets in Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Oriya, Kannada and a host of other languages. While some authors have debated whether writing about India has been done better in English or in the ‘native’ languages, Jack refuses to even mention any writing other than in English, except a passing reference to Satyajit Ray’s films.

It is hard to overstate how deeply this distorts any viewing of writing on India. It is not that English is an alien language to India, it is not, but it has remained until quite recently the language of the Indian elite, and is never used by the vast majority of citizens, except in formal documents or in the cloistered confines of schools, colleges and universities. Few people thought in the language, or moved fluidly between English and other tongues. This is highlighted in the pieces of fiction and poetry in the Granta collection.

Vivek Shanbhag’s short story ‘Ghachar Ghochar’, ironically about the intimacy of language, is one of the best pieces in the collection, and is a translated work. Arun Kolatkar’s ‘Sticky Fingers’ is another fine piece of writing by a Marathi poet who also wrote in English. Its power arises from closely observed, deep intimacies of life, very much like Shanbhag’s piece.

There are other pieces of fiction that work, but that is mostly the story of people who live in English. In this, obviously, Upmanyu Chatterjee’s work shines. He is a past master in capturing Indian reality in an idiosyncratic English, and presents an uproarious piece of domestic cacophony of a modern, Anglicised, primarily English-speaking family. Amit Chaudhuri’s carefully presented work of an Indian middle-class student living on limited means in London is less brilliant, but is nevertheless successful.

The only other fiction piece worth mentioning is Hari Kunzru’s ‘Drone’, which is as distant and superficially elegant as Kunzru’s relationship with India, but interestingly written. A reality lived in another language is difficult to convey, and if fiction is the art of opening the door into another person’s feelings, English is the wrong key for the vast majority of Indian stories.

This restriction falls away when dealing with non-fiction, which has the privilege of being distant, a quality that English-writing observing Indian reality lends itself to quite well. The pick of the pieces is Raghu Karnad’s fantastic tale of a Japanese prostitute as a prisoner of war held in Delhi’s Purana Khila during World War II. Deeply researched, it has both historical breadth as well as a close appreciation of human life. Sam Miller’s essay ‘Gandhi, the Londoner’ and Aman Sethi’s ‘Love Jihad’ both open complex narratives that have the power to disturb and surprise, and are elegantly told. In an odd way, the photographs work in the same way — as distant observers. Although Gauri Gill’s innovative idea of photographing the artist Rajesh Vangad in his village, and asking him to draw on the photographs, creates a fiction-nonfiction piece all of its own.

Here I have to add another footnote: many of these essays and stories are done by friends or acquaintances of mine. Can it be that the Indian Republic of Letters is so tiny that a reviewer personally knows a quarter of the most interesting writers on India? Of course not. Just posing the question shows how ridiculous such a thing would be. But considering how small the world of people writing well on India in English is, it can be true, and this is what makes Ian Jack’s selection so problematic. It is not that much of what he has presented in this selection is same-old same-old, it is how much has been left out, ignored by an editor who had not the wit to search for something other than in the language he knows.

Omair Ahmad is an author. His last book was on Bhutan